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Skanska : Developing a Winning Team to Deliver Winning Results

Skanska, one of the UK’s leading construction and development businesses, has recently called on the expertise of Acorn to assist them in the development of a new team with responsibility for the company’s submissions and bid support. The newly formed submissions team is part of the organisations UK-wide preconstruction function.

Skanska’s UK construction business is made up of 10 individual
operating units, which include civil engineering, building, mechanical
and electrical services and a wide range of specialist activities, such
as piling and foundations, facilities management, utilities and
infrastructure services.

Traditionally, each unit has been independently
responsible for the development and production of pre-qualifications
and bid submissions. However, over recent years the company has been
developing One Skanska solutions to share the various skills and
experience from across the organisation, which also includes
pre-construction activities.

In September last year, Annika Tavander joined the company as head of
submissions. Since this time she has been looking at how to best apply
the One Skanska approach to submissions to serve the company as a whole,
whilst at the same time continuing to meet the needs of the individual
operating units.

Annika explains “We wanted to develop a collaborative approach to
work winning. Skanska has a number of people who are located across the
country working with submissions, who have much knowledge, skills and
experience. By coming together as a team, sharing best practice and
further developing our skills together, we can improve the way we work
and the quality of the end products – our submissions.

As a first step, Acorn interviewed all the submissions team members
and a number of internal stakeholders, senior management and heads of
pre-construction to discuss what the requirements for the business were
on an individual basis, and how this could be maximised though the One
Skanska approach.

A two day workshop, facilitated by Acorn, was attended by the team
members. Because of the geographical locations and multiple discipline
nature of Skanska’s business many of the people - around 15 - had not
met each other before.

The group session enabled us to bring everyone together, explore the
objectives and aspirations of the One Skanska approach to bidding, but
most importantly everyone had the opportunity to network and begin to
think like one team. This approach has proved very powerful for creating
a foundation for us to build upon.”